Former CIA Director And Defense Secretary Says CIA Tried, But Failed, To Do Economic Espionage

from the this-doesn't-make-the-us-look-any-better dept

US intelligence officials still seem to think that there's some big distinction between the kind of intelligence work the US does versus the kind that other countries do. US officials time and time again claim that they don't do "economic espionage" -- even though it's pretty clear that they do it, just through indirect means (i.e., while they don't hand trade secrets over to companies, they're certainly using economic information to impact policy and trade discussions).

"There are probably a dozen or 15 countries that steal our technology in this way,” Gates said in an interview the Council on Foreign Relations posted online Thursday. “In terms of the most capable, next to the Chinese, are the French — and they’ve been doing it a long time.”

Gates, who was also director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the first Bush administration, said that when he talks to business audiences, he asks, “How many of you go to Paris on business?’ Hands go up. ‘How many of you take your laptops?’ Hands go up. ‘How many of you take your laptops to dinner?’ Not very many hands.”

“For years,” Gates said, “French intelligence services have been breaking into the hotel rooms of American businessmen and surreptitiously downloading their laptops, if they felt those laptops had technological information or competitive information that would be useful for French companies. France has been a mercantilist country — the government and business have operated hand in hand — since the time of Louis XIV.”

Throwing everyone else under the bus does nothing to make the US and the NSA's activities any better, and it's bizarre that intelligence officials seem to think they have the moral upper hand here. Almost no one sees it that way. They just look petty.

Even more bizarre: for all of Gates' talk about how the US doesn't do economic espionage... he then basically admits that he tried to do exactly that and failed:

But despite his attempt to work with, in his words, five or six commerce secretaries, “I never could get one of them interested in being the facilitator of getting that kind of CIA information to American companies. So this is something we don’t do."

Uh... he says "this is something we don't do" while admitting that he tried to do exactly that. He was just stymied by whoever was Commerce Secretary. If a more... permissive Commerce Secretary were in the job, it would be a very different story, now wouldn't it? In fact, this is a pretty major admission. For all the talk of "we don't do that," what Gates really means is "we tried to do economic espionage, and we would do economic espionage, if we could."

Re:

This is where the Wikileaks are handy.

"The US embassy in Paris advised Washington to start a military-style trade war against any Euroxpean Union country which opposed genetically modified (GM) crops, newly released WikiLeaks cables show."

Re:

It could be argued that the TTIP and similar trade agreements are extremely mercantilist. Removing trade barriers between the signed up nations has the effect of creating massive barriers to other countries.

Re:

"we tried to do economic espionage, and we would do economic espionage, if we could."

But we can't because it wasn't allowed by the Commerce Secretary. This is an example of the system working.

But then again, saying, "I never could get one of them interested in being the facilitator of getting that kind of CIA information to American companies", implies that the CIA has the info, they're just not allowed to share it with businesses.

Either way, it's still better than the French, assuming they do indeed break into hotel rooms and copy laptop disks to steal trade secrets.

Re: Re:

And I wouldn't call it a safety net since that implies that we intentionally pick 'em too dumb to succeed. This is more like falling way off the high wire, missing the safety net, and accidentally landing in a large pile of hay.

"“I never could get one of them interested in being the facilitator of getting that kind of CIA information to American companies"

So the CIA have the information but the Commerce Secretary's weren't interested? So "we do the espionage bit but we're too stupid to do the economic bit". Okay, if you say so.

"downloading their laptops"

What IS IT with the peculiar language political animals use? And Hollywood, TV etc. What is "downloading a laptop"? It makes no grammatical sense. Do humans really speak like that? The non-tech people I hear never say it. It's like watching your flabby-bellied dad trying to hang with the surfer dudes. Somebody tell him he's doin' it wrong.

The attempted cover ups of all the government is doing in regards to spying makes no one believe what it says it does or doesn't do. The creditability has been ruined by the NSA and the Snowden revaluations.

You can count this as another collateral damage done by attempting to ignore the concerns of it's citizens. The lies that have been told in attempting to deny and attempting to redefine the English language to make it permissible also kill any belief that when it issues public statements that they are what they appear to be. You can no longer believe what is heard coming from public officials as being truthful.